factfulness ten reasons we re wrong about the world

Those cravings still exist in our animal brains and contribute to today’s problems with obesity.

Hundreds of years ago, humans cared most about survival, craving sugar and fat because they kept us alive. He explains how each comes from a survival instinct hard-wired into the human brain from hunter-gatherer days. Rosling defines the ten dramatic instincts: gap, negativity, straight line, fear, size, generalization, destiny, single perspective, blame, and urgency. The oversimplified view of global wealth keeps people ignorant of the improvements, both small and large, occurring across the world worse, it contributes to the idea that life everywhere is getting worse. In reality, global income exists on four levels, and most of the world’s population exists on levels two and three. To discuss these instincts, Rosling first debunks one of the most common myths among today’s people: that global income is divided into two groups: rich countries and poor countries.

Rosling considered the fact that people often have outdated world views as well as poor access to information, which leads to incorrect hypotheses finally, Rosling concluded the general population’s systematic ignorance came down to a widespread overdramatic worldview.ĭrawing on his research in medicine, statistics, and the social sciences, Rosling identifies ten human instincts, or, the dramatic instincts, that contribute to a general tendency to consistently and unknowingly misinterpret the condition of the world and its people. No matter his audience (politicians, scientists, or the average person on the street of any country), people, without fail, scored worse on Rosling’s test than chimpanzees picking answers at random. Rosling compiled a list of thirteen easy-to-answer, fact-based questions about economic, medical, and environmental progress. After learning that his class of advanced medical students had very wrong misconceptions about the world, he set out to test if the same misconceptions persisted in other groups. Hans Rosling, a Swedish doctor, discovered the trend of global ignorance in the mid 1990’s.

Factfulness ten reasons we re wrong about the world